Editorial: On arts center timing

Usually bustling at near-capacity limits during New Year’s festivities, Hawaii’s hotels were too quiet as we greeted 2021, with statewide occupancy reportedly hovering at 15% to 23%.

What’s more, during the first 11 months of 2020 a total of 2.48 million visitors touched down in the islands — a tally far removed from the record-breaking 10.4 million arrivals during 2019, according to Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) figures. Clearly, this state agency’s focus at this time should be jump-starting our visitor-fueled economic engine.

Given that the pandemic has cost the agency more than half of its budget and all of its state appropriations for the foreseeable future, the HTA board’s recent allocation of $250,000 for an online proposal tied to the long-stalled Center for Hawaiian Music and Dance seems a misguided move.

HTA CEO John De Fries said the funding is going to “development of a virtual concept” that would “complement a brick-and-mortar concept, as envisioned, originally.”

Dedicated to cultural perpetuation and preservation — complete with exhibits, demonstrations and performances — the vision for an in-person center has been in an expensive stop-and-start planning stage for more than a decade.

Due to COVID-19 concerns, access to some similar sorts of established venues, such as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, is currently limited to digital content. In that regard, HTA’s impulse to explore an online direction is understandable. Further, the agency is rightly attempting to balance tourism’s reboot with a four-pillar strategy: natural resources, Hawaiian culture, community and brand marketing.

But now is not the right time to sink precious resources into a concept described by HTA’s cultural director as “something that looks more like a video game and less like a 2D web page … that’s more interactive.”

Last month, with Hawaii continuing to rank among states with the highest unemployment rates, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization executive director Carl Bonham sensibly pointed out: “In the short run, the only thing that will make a significant difference in getting people back to work … is bringing back tourists, bringing back tourist dollars.”

To that end, for now, the HTA board should rescind funding for the “virtual structure,” which holds little short-run promise to help bring back more tourists. Instead, the agency should spend more on further stepping up efforts to educate visitors — before and after arrival — about our pandemic-related protocols. To be effective, this messaging must be both engaging and ever-present.